How much we can trust packet timestamping

From: uaca@alumni.uv.es
Date: Mon Dec 30 2002 - 06:28:38 EST


Hi all

IMHO The problem is quite complicated because

+ common hardware is not designed for real time:

        - sends multiple PDUs within one interrupt, and can be delayed
        - Host adapter bus & infraestructure is not designed to garantee latency
          etc...
     
+ software is also not designed for realtime

        - drivers may timestamp in softirq's
        - irqs has no deterministic latency either
        etc...

So even if do_gettimeofday() has 1/CPUfreq resolution by using TSC register
packet timestamping meassurement is biased, how much?

anybody has studied this? are there reports/doc about this topic?

of course, this can be avoided by using specialiced hardware, but I'm not
interested on that and I would like to know how much I can trust this
timestamps

Any comment would be greatly appreciated

Thanks

        Ulisses

                Debian GNU/Linux: a dream come true
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